‘I’m An Old Lady’ Is Not A Good Enough Excuse For Smacking Someone Else’s Child In The Checkout Line

The elderly can be quirky. I know this, because my mom lives in a retirement community condo and some of these older ladies have no filter whatsoever. Most of the time I just brush it off and think, “If I live more than eighty years on this earth I’m going to say and do whatever I want!” That’s what I thought until I read this story about an elderly woman who smacked another woman’s child in a checkout line because she thought the child was misbehaving. You don’t get a pass for that. I don’t care how old you are.

“Sophia was in the trolley with her younger sister when I was paying for the shopping,” Debbie said. ”She dropped her shoe out of the trolley onto the ground and an elderly lady behind us in the queue picked it up and put it back in the trolley.

“Sophia would have thought that was great because she engaged with somebody, so she picked up the shoe and threw it onto the ground again.

“That’s when the lady smacked her on the arm and said ‘That’s naughty, you’ve been told not to do that’.

When the mother told the older lady that she shouldn’t touch someone else’s child, the woman excused her own actions by blaming the mother – basically telling her that if she would hit her child more the general public wouldn’t have to. Someone with the lady tried to apologize, but the elderly lady “told her to be quiet.”

The child has Down Syndrome and was shocked but did not cry. The mother thinks it was actually a pretty hard smack, but says her daughter “doesn’t feel pain the way other children do, she has a very high pain threshold” so she just looked at her mother, surprised.

I can’t even imagine how I would react if someone put their hands on my child. I don’t care how old this lady is, there is no excuse for putting your hands on another human, let alone a child. The ornery old lady routine only goes so far. No one is going to call the cops on an old lady, but sheesh. She’s the one that needs to be taught a lesson.